{"id":468723,"date":"2026-10-17T10:44:31","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T10:44:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/468723\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T10:44:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T10:44:31","slug":"elon-musk-is-bankrolling-massive-push-for-ken-paxton-in-texas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/468723\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk Is Bankrolling Massive Push for Ken Paxton in Texas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Support justice-driven, accurate and transparent news \u2014 make a quick donation<\/a> to Truthout today!\u00a0<\/p>\n

After months of being outspent by Democrat James Talarico<\/a> on the airwaves, Republicans launched a massive rescue mission for Ken Paxton<\/a> in September, dropping over $200 million to boost their U.S. Senate candidate in Texas.<\/p>\n

New campaign finance filings revealed that much of the advertising flurry was funded by one highly motivated donor: Elon Musk, the world\u2019s wealthiest man.<\/p>\n

Musk, who lives near the SpaceX Starbase facility in South Texas, appears to have poured nearly $190 million into the U.S. Senate race in his adopted home state. His role in financing Paxton\u2019s air support was disclosed in reports filed Thursday to the Federal Election Commission by Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP\u2019s main super PAC and the biggest spender in Texas\u2019 Senate contest.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 9, the first day of the GOP midterm convention in Dallas, Musk gave $75 million to SLF. The next day, SLF put $75 million into a new entity called Texas PAC. By the weekend after the convention, the new super PAC was up on the air with a positive spot about Paxton\u2019s work on sex trafficking and a negative ad attacking Talarico as being for \u201cthey\/them, not you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two weeks after cutting his first check, Musk gave an additional $83 million to SLF, according to the group\u2019s filing. Sure enough, SLF deposited $83 million into Texas PAC\u2019s coffers the following day.<\/p>\n

Related Story<\/p>\n


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\n The spending will likely target \u201cget out the vote\u201d efforts for Republican candidates in multiple House and Senate races.\n <\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s donations armed Senate Republicans to take over the airwaves in Texas. Using Texas PAC as the vessel to book airtime, SLF has thus far spent over $159 million on TV, radio and digital advertising, double the outlay from Talarico\u2019s campaign, according to media tracking firm AdImpact.<\/p>\n

SLF backed Sen. John Cornyn<\/a> in the primary, estimating that a Paxton candidacy would require $150 million to $200 million to retain the seat \u2014 money that could come at the expense of other states. While the prediction proved prescient, Musk\u2019s investment has changed the calculus.<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks to some generous investors who have dedicated money to an affiliate, Texas PAC, we\u2019ve been able to go in and support Ken Paxton,\u201d SLF executive director Alex Latcham told<\/a> Bloomberg TV Wednesday. \u201cWe\u2019ll spend nearly $200 million in that race. But again, thanks to Leader John Thune and the Republican caucus and our fundraising, we haven\u2019t had to subtract resources from other states to do so.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Tesla and SpaceX founder got involved in the race after his political team reached out to Senate Leadership Fund, the Senate GOP\u2019s main outside campaign group, to voice Musk\u2019s concerns about Paxton\u2019s standing in the race, according to a person familiar with the conversations. That led to an agreement between Musk\u2019s orbit and SLF \u2014 Musk would provide $10 million to Lone Star Liberty PAC, the main outside group boosting Paxton, if SLF gave $5 million and the PAC raised an additional $5 million. The details of the conversation were first reported<\/a> by Axios.<\/p>\n

That windfall was badly needed. Lone Star Liberty PAC had only $35,000 in the bank at the end of June, having drained its coffers on Paxton\u2019s hard-fought primary win over Cornyn. Talarico, meanwhile, was continuing<\/a> his torrid fundraising pace and was poised to keep dominating the political ad spending battle if help did not arrive for Paxton.<\/p>\n

Talarico posted another record quarter<\/a> amid Paxton\u2019s SLF-powered ad surge, hauling in $64 million between July and September \u2014 a third-quarter record among all U.S. Senate candidates. The Austin Democrat has maintained a polling lead for months in averages of nonpartisan public surveys, an alarming sight for a Republican Party whose unbeaten streak in Texas statewide races spans more than three decades.<\/p>\n

With Musk\u2019s donation and the matching funds, Lone Star Liberty PAC spent $17.5 million on broadcast TV advertising in early September, by far the most significant pro-Paxton ad buy of the general election. By the end of the month, a handful of outside groups led by SLF had dropped over $217 million on ads in the Texas Senate race.<\/p>\n

X Not a Part of Paxton\u2019s Big Tech Crusade<\/p>\n

Paxton has not commented publicly about Musk\u2019s support.<\/p>\n

In the past, the attorney general has praised Musk for backing Republicans in 2024. He spent hours at Musk\u2019s home two days before that year\u2019s election hearing Musk recount all his efforts to boost GOP candidates, Paxton said at Turning Point USA\u2019s AmericaFest<\/a> in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cAren\u2019t you all glad he\u2019s on our side?\u201d Paxton said to cheers. \u201cI am convinced that whatever he did, whatever rocket science thing he did, made a huge difference in this election.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paxton has also aligned himself with Musk through his role as Texas attorney general \u2014 and largely skirted scrutinizing Musk\u2019s companies as his office has increasingly taken on Big Tech<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2022, as Musk sought to buy Twitter, Paxton opened an investigation<\/a> into the social media company for how it reported the number of accounts on the platform that were fake or bots \u2014 inspecting whether the service was inflating the number of its actual users to boost its value for revenue. At the time, Musk was raising similar questions. He ultimately bought Twitter and renamed it X.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Paxton opened an investigation into World Federation of Advertisers, an organization that represents marketers, to assess whether its members were conspiring to boycott specific social media services. TechCrunch reported<\/a> Musk\u2019s X, which had filed an antitrust suit against the group, was likely among the social media platforms.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Paxton has taken on tech giants including Netflix, WhatsApp, Discord, and Meta \u2014 probes he has touted on the campaign trail.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs attorney general, I\u2019ve sued some of the largest companies in the world \u2026 for taking advantage of our kids by exposing them to dangerous, addictive material,\u201d Paxton said after defeating Cornyn in May. \u201cIn Washington, I will not stop fighting to protect Texas children from Big Tech.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Paxton has taken arrows from critics who\u2019ve accused him of turning a blind eye to X and Musk. In January, a group of Democratic state representatives demanded<\/a> the attorney general investigate the platform\u2019s artificial intelligence agent, Grok, and its creation of exploitative content about children and women. Paxton did not respond to the letter publicly.<\/p>\n

The same month, a group of attorneys general from across the country sent Musk\u2019s company a letter<\/a> demanding that it address its AI agent\u2019s creation of child sex abuse content. Paxton was not among the signatories.<\/p>\n

Funding the GOP Ground Game<\/p>\n

Musk\u2019s political operation is also deeply involved in the Republican ground game in Texas, from canvassing to mailers, across several key races. America PAC, which he seeded with nearly $90 million last quarter, had pumped $18.8 million into the Senate race through Tuesday, per FEC filings, which capture efforts like text messaging, mailers and ads but not in-person canvassing such as block-walking and phone-banking. Over 80% of that money has gone to anti-Talarico messaging.<\/p>\n

The tech mogul has significant business interests in the Lone Star State. Musk has moved the state of incorporation for many of his companies to Texas in recent years. Boring Company and X are headquartered in Bastrop, SpaceX is near Brownsville and Tesla\u2019s corporate headquarters is now in Austin.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just the Senate race. Musk\u2019s PAC has spent about $800,000 boosting Republican candidates in the five most competitive U.S. House races in Texas. The biggest share has gone to the 35th Congressional District, a San Antonio-area seat Republicans redrew last summer with the intention of flipping, but which has proven highly competitive.<\/p>\n

Musk spent hundreds of millions in 2024 to boost Republicans, including Donald Trump\u2019s presidential bid. Trump rewarded Musk by tapping him to lead the controversial Department of Government Efficiency initiative. The two had a public falling out later that year, when Musk disparaged the president\u2019s signature legislative effort and alleged Trump was in the Jeffrey Epstein files.<\/p>\n

The dustup did not appear to sap Musk\u2019s appetite for bankrolling Republicans\u2019 political spending. The world\u2019s wealthiest man has already surpassed his 2024 political spending this cycle, with Texas the largest focus of his operation.<\/p>\n

Other GOP groups are fundraising off of Musk\u2019s Texas spending bonanza as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cElon Musk understands what it\u2019s like to live under far left Democrats,\u201d reads one National Republican Senatorial Committee fundraising email, which notes that Musk has spent $276 million in the midterms and directs readers to a WinRed fundraising page. \u201cHe fled an oppressive regime in California that crippled the state with a radical agenda before finding a new home in Texas. But now, the same Far Left Democrats that ran California into the ground are coming to SEIZE Elon\u2019s new home!\u201d<\/p>\n

While far from reaching Musk\u2019s investment levels, some prominent Texas GOP donors also came off the sidelines for Paxton in recent months, new filings show.<\/p>\n

West Texas oil billionaire Farris Wilks, who has supported Paxton in his state campaigns and directed millions to hardline Republicans, donated $250,000 to one of Paxton\u2019s joint fundraising committees in mid-August, his first federal expenditure of the cycle.<\/p>\n

Amarillo billionaire Alex Fairly, meanwhile, had maxed out to Paxton\u2019s direct campaign account with a $7,000 donation in the spring; in late August, he gave $274,300 to Paxton\u2019s joint fundraising committee.<\/p>\n

Paxton also received large sums this quarter from the Dallas Cowboys brass. Team president Stephen Jones and chief sales and marketing officer Jerry Jones Jr. gave $122,000 and $100,000, respectively. Their father, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, donated a six-figure sum in the second quarter.<\/p>\n

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This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Support justice-driven, accurate and transparent news \u2014 make a quick donation to Truthout today!\u00a0 After months of being…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":468724,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-468723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=468723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/468724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=468723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=468723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=468723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}